Birding Blue Mtns

Credits

I'm constantly amazed by the generosity of the wonderful friends who have provided such top quality photographs, drawings, advice and encouragement to me in this project.

Special thanks to Nevil Lazarus and David Stowe for use of their brilliant bird photos and to Fiona Lumsden for her beautiful drawings. Without the contributions from these three talented individuals, these pages would look very dull!

To see more of Nevil Lazarus' photos, go to his web gallery and if prompted, type in the password "nevbirds". Each time I receive new photos from Nevil, I'm certain they cannot get any better, but they do!

I also highly recommend a visit to David Stowe's bird photography website and you can see his stunning landscape photos on his main website, or visit his gallery at Carindale Wines, Palmers Lane, Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley.

Cathy McBey has also been of particular help during the production of this website, providing additional photos and patiently answering my emails every time I hassle her for technical advice. She's even lent me her very nice digital camera from time to time. Cathy is a long-standing member of the Upper Blue Mountains Camera Club and her natural artistic eye is evident in her photography – landscapes, close-ups and portraits – for which she has won many awards.

Additional photos have been generously provided by a number of other photographers, all of whom I am very grateful to. (Especially Lip Kee Yap who sent me a wonderful batch of photos taken during his visit in February 2008. You can see Lip Kee's photo collections on his Flickr page here.)

Thanks also to David Geering for allowing me to include his Capertee Valley birdlist, compiled over many years of field trips and research.

Valuable feedback and advice was also received from a number of other friends and correspondents, and I thank every one of you for your encouragement.

All images are copyright of the original photographer or artist.

- Carol, June 2007

Palm Cockatoo, by Fiona Lumsden.

Fiona Lumsden

Fiona grew up at Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains where she developed a love for the flora and fauna of the surrounding wilderness.

She has been studying, illustrating and painting Australian wildlife and plants for over 25 years, selling through galleries, general exhibitions and private commissions. She uses acrylics, watercolours, pastels, inks and pencil on 100% rag watercolour paper. She has also illustrated three books to date, and more recently has produced two posters depicting birds of the Capertee Valley and the Blue Mountains.

She has had two solo exhibitions: at The Australian Museum Sydney (1987) and at Hunters Hill Sydney (1998).

An exhibiting member of the Wildlife Artists Society for several years, she has won the Thomas Nelson Australia award for best drawing.

A selection of her work can currently be seen on display in the window of Summit Gear, in Main Street Katoomba (opposite the railway station).

Fiona is also a skilled birder, has birded in many parts of Australia and is an active member of Blue Mountains Bird Observers and other birdwatching organisations.

For more information and examples of Fiona's work, see her page on the Blue Mountains Artists' Network website. Email lumfio@yahoo.com.

Above: Brown Falcon. Photo Nevil Lazarus.

A note about this site

This website has been in the planning stages for much longer than I care to admit. It progressed at a snail's pace while I taught myself HTML during what little "spare time" I could find (which usually amounted to zero). However like many initially daunting projects it has gradually gathered momentum and been a great learning experience for me. It remains a work in progress with much more information to be added as I get the chance. Please stay tuned.

I built the site on my trusty Mac, hand coding it using TextEdit, and tested it with a number of browsers on Mac OSX and Windows ME. With different computers and different software it might not look exactly as intended. It looks best with a screen resolution of 1024x768, or higher, but should also work OK with a resolution of 800x600 as long as you have your browser window maximised.

Australian spelling is used and, as much as possible, Australian words in an effort to promote our unique Aussie culture and language. This means I use words like "track" instead of "trail", "bushwalking" instead of "hiking", etc. Dates are written with the day first, followed by the month.

Above all I've tried to keep the layout simple, easy to navigate and reasonably quick to load (for the benefit of anyone like myself still using a dial-up connection). If you have problems viewing any pages, find links that don't work, or have any suggestions, please email me.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information on this site is as accurate as possible. If you believe anything I have written to be untrue or misleading then please let me know.

While I love communicating with people about birds and nature, due to my schedule and the number of emails received I regret that I cannot answer emails regarding school projects or unsolicited requests for bird locations. I'll try to get as much information as possible onto this site, but if I spend too much time answering individual emails that will never get done. Thanks for your understanding.

- Carol, April 2006

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